Gronholm tops super special
Former world champion Marcus Gronholm kicked off his bid to end this season's World Rally Championship with a victory in perfect style on Thursday as he topped the times during the opening super-special stage
The Peugeot star was just 0.3 seconds quicker than Citroen's newly-crowned world champion Sebastien Loeb, with Peugeot's Harri Rovanpera third quickest, another 0.1s down.
Subaru's Petter Solberg, who has had a minor crash in the final morning shakedown, was fourth quickest - 0.8 seconds slower than Gronholm - with Belgian Francois Duval the fastest Ford in fifth place.
Markko Martin was sixth fastest on the stage in the second Ford, but he now faces a massive battle to stay in the rally. His engine suffered problems near the end of the stage, with flames seen licking underneath the bonnet, and the Estonian will face a nervous wait to see how terminal the damage is ahead of tomorrow morning's 10-minute service ahead of official action. If the problem is only turbo related then he should be able to continue.
Japanese Group N runner Fumio Nutahara topped the Production class field with the eight-quickest time from Ford Focus WRC privateer Antony Warmbold, while Jani Paasonen got his PWRC title bid off to a solid start with the 13th-fastest time overall.
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Toyota was unstoppable in the 2021 World Rally Championship, with an excellent 75% strike rate from 12 rallies. But in a scary proposition for its rivals, the Japanese marque had built a car for the final year of the previous regulations set which it believes was much faster and could feasibly have crushed the opposition completely. Here the story of its mothballed world-beater
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